I like to move onto the ‘pitch’ or hitting area.  For some reason this is 22 yards in length, nobody seems to know why and there is no mention of the width of the hitting area.  Please note, the hitting zone must never be confused with an area called, ‘the ground.’  This can be any size you like apparently which doesn’t seem quiet fair to me as what would be a score of four at one ground might be a six at another, ab-so-frigging-lutely ridiculous.  Have no fear there’s more stupidity to come playmates.

If you look carefully at the pitch you can’t help but noticed that it’s never really in the center of the ground moreover the pitch doesn’t look as if it’s a grassed area at all, and you’d be right.  Since the early 40’s the pitch has in fact been  fashioned from Rice Crispies.  You’ll also notice that most modern grounds have a spare Rice Crispie patch, two or more in some cases as it all depends on the weather.  After all you wouldn’t like to run up and down on soggy Rice Crispies would you?  Okay, let’s move onto some of the other equipment and terminology applied to this pastime should you ever feel the need to play the game yourself. 

‘Bat’ or ‘Ball basher.’  Tricky one this.  Originally the MCC struggled to find a uniform length and width for the basher to please the sides of the day but fortunately fate was on the side of the up and coming gamester.  A boat docked at Chipping Ongar one day baring spices, Abbot Ale and fruit from foreign parts or Waltham-on-the-stow- market as it was known back then.  Along with this rich cargo of goods came a solitary Flying Fox which had snuffed it during the returning voyage.  After a rest and a wash the captain, Lars Tharp went on the town looking for a grog shop and a top class shag under the pier but no slappers did he find.  Unhappy with his lot he got rat arsed in the Slut and Gusset and returned to his ship groatless.  As he waddled up his gang plank he spied a very salty sea bitch idly hitting an unripe orange with the very dead and stiff Flying Fox from one end of his galleon to the other.  The captain bellowed, “Oi, put that bat down and swab me nadger with yer trout trench,” and the name stuck.  It’s all true I swear.

Oooh it’s teatime…

Robin Williams once described the oh so British game of cricket like this, “It’s like baseball on Valium,” and I have to say I agree with him.  I can safely say I’ve never ever watched a game from start to finish, well I do have a life!  How anyone can get exited over a simple game made to sound so complex is beyond me.   May be I’m an oik, a bit off riff raff if you will, I really don’t give a monkeys it’s just so boring.  And when boredom sets in I can feel my humour tissues priming themselves for a workout.  After listening to two of my friends rant on and on about a game between the English and the West Indians, which we always seem to lose, I devised a whole new breakdown of the pompous game called cricket just to wind them up, so here it is folks, Walton’s almanac of Sticks and Twigs.

Let’s start with the name of the sport, aah haa haa haa harrrrrrrrrr sport – that’s priceless.  I know what a football is but what is a rugby and with that in mind what the hell’s a cricket?  Tis neither bat nor ball nor stump is it?  Back in the day there was little or no equipment and lathes hadn’t been invented so the man of sport was really up against it.  In 1346  a committee member of the MCC made plans to employ what fell from the Oak and Ash and the humble Box wood and it was then that the name, Stick and Twigs were first used.  Three sticks were stuck in the ground and then two sets of twigs were laid across them. 

Now, during the global warming of the day the Woodford county side, The old Fartonians noticed when the weather change (got bloody windy) both sets of twigs blew off the sticks, something had to be done.  A female street urchin said, “Use straw bound with string.”  This was a rubbish idea as string hadn’t been invented.  The urchin spoke again, “Use a bail of hay.”  “Don’t be a twatbag,” the captain said and threw his ball at her knocking the young lady to the ground.  In years to come this would be known as, bowling a maiden over.  Interestingly the word ‘bail’ has survived until this very day.   My that is interesting!

Eventually the problem was solved by using Ebony which was imported from Leytonstone and these bails are still known as the ‘heavy set.’  They are a permanent fixture in ‘blowy’ games today and in ‘non blowy’ games the captain of the home team can ask for the ‘light set’ if he so wishes – how exciting!  Like the game this decision can take days.  The lighter set of bails today are all made from the discarded remnants from the Keil Craft range, 1956 to 1973.  These have been collected over the years from projects that were smashed up out of sheer frustration when son and father alike couldn’t get their model plane to fly.  Aaah yes I well remember the great balsa wood mountain of 1968.

Lunch I think chaps…

Now it’s come to my notice that in these days of recession and unemployment the work market has become a difficult place to shine.  So what can you do to climb above your rivals?  Well the most obvious angle to aim for is a niche you can call your own before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon.  My advice, and this comes from minutes of careful thought, become an explorer.  The only real problem is that this job, (job – hahahahahaaha) excludes the ordinary work pleb.  I mean, when was the last time The Sun’s headlines ran, Burt Pilchard from Hackney climbs the North Col!

I can’t see what all the fuss is about.  It’s just walking and climbing – I can do that and so can you!  Okay, to the top of the Tibetan hill it’s 29,029 ft or roughly 9,676 yards.  Well I’ve paced it out and it’s about the same distance from my house to Wood Green and back again give or take a snow flake.   When do you work?  About once every three years.  What do you in the meantime?  Try to ponce as much money off someone else to pay for your trip as possible.   Brilliant! 

The job is undertaken in stages, basically the journey starts life as nothing more than a bloody camping holiday.  You get flown to the campsite and when you arrive you are assigned a party of Tibetan work plebs to show you the way!   At base camp you make sure, being British, that it’s you, you, you, who are in charge and it’s you, you, you who are going to cop all the glory when you get to the top of the double glazing head quarters. 

At camp four things aren’t going so well and the food rations are running low.  Never mind, eat a Sherpa, you can always pick up another one at Sherpa’s R us which can be found on an industrial site on the South Col.   At camp five you tell your man, Sherpa, don’t mind me I was born to carry all of your gear despite being much, much shorter than you, Smith that his work is over and and push him back down to base camp.  That’s after you get him to put up a couple of ladders to make the last 50 ft a tad easier of course.   You reach the top, you wave your wedding tackle about and shout, for I’m a jolly good fellow and walk back down again.  Honestly, is that what they’re really teaching students at Eton to do these days?  Well worth the money I reckon.  If they want a challenge I’ll pick the next one.  Across the Arctic – backwards – in just a string vest and a pair of nylon Y fronts!

Your ‘umble servant BB

In Whitelee, near Glasgow  today the United kingdom’s largest wind farm was turned on and it’s changed the face of the map forever.  A 140 turbines are now spinning their little hearts out as we speak and can produce enough renewable energy to suppy a small town.  But as usual there are concerns from some professional bodies and the local residents.

There have been reports that the seagull population has been halved, quite literally, already.  Parts of this breed have been spread all over the Scotish coastline when the migrating  fools flew straight into the blades of the turbines.  But don’t worry Haringey council has jumped on this opportunity to rid the area of their seagull problem and have boxed up and forwarded 60,000 breeding pairs of the sky rat to Whitelee, some of whom have never seen the sea or been on holiday.  So it’s a win win situation alround.

Some say it’s a bid to massage the Scotish unemployment figures.  Scientist say that the turbines can rotate at a speed of a 120mph each and if two more are erected that part of the British Isles will simply take off.  Further figures show that a dozen more turbines could float that part of the coast as far a field as Sardinia.  If I owned an airline I think I’d start looking into this form of transport before someone beats me to it!!!

How my heart bleeds for the MP’s.  Most people, such as the NHS nurses don’t earn in a year what some of them claim in expenses, still they haven’t broken any rules.  Why?  Because they made them up in the first place!  But don’t worry chums they’ll have to pay it all back, after all that’s what happens when you’re overpaid or commit fraud in the benefit system.  Why I should be surprised if some of them get a criminal record!  Makes you wonder how long they’ve been getting away with it though.  It’ll only be a matter of decades I should think and after all they did say sorry so that makes it all ginger and peachy doesn’t it?  Bunch of upper class low lifes if you ask moi.  “I don’t feel safe in Soho,” one MP said, aaaaah.  You wanna move then luv, after all you can afford it!   Desperandum illigitimi voters.

NAME CHECK…  This in from a couple of days ago, ready?  Tristan Gooley!  From the Sussex Gooleys I believe.  He must’ve  thought he’d been born with a target on his back!

Gotta shoot, walnuts to prune an’ all that.  Bipolar Bill

For more time than I care to mention I’ve been living off of my overdraft and my account history or part of it at least must come up on a screen when I call my bank.  I phoned my bank yesterday to transfer a small amount from one account to another.   Despite this glaring evidence and after speaking to a person in call centre somewhere in the known world I was offered a loan at ‘reasonable’ rates.   Honestly, is this really the way forward, pouncing the people who need some extra money but have no way of paying it back?

So I have a plan.  Fair enough the Bank of England are knocking out a few more notes, what use is that to me or you?  When might we all benefit from this desperate act, two, five, tens years?  It’s not going to happen soon enough is it?  My scheme however will really speed things up, I think we should be able to print our own money, I reckon the credit problem would be over in about a week.  So come on, who’s with me???

What’s in a name?  Well here’s a few that made me laugh…  Gordon Farquar.  Ooops!  Maybe his dad was one!  Sir Jock Stirrup.  I kid you not.  When I saw this next name I did actually spit part of my bacon sandwich across the front-room, ladies and gentlemen I give you Jonathon Beaglehole!  Now this last one sort of creeps up on you,  Mr Richard Sole.  Years ago he was partner in a dental practise.  Dick Sole, getting warmer.  Dicky Sole, almost there.   For the maximum effect you’d have to invite him and his wife to a black tie function or a bash where the guests are announced as they turn up.  I give you Mr and Mrs R Sole.  

Gotto dash my pet squid, Bernard has escaped!  BB

Buy, sell, dollar, mark.  Pig bellies have flopped!    It’s a bad day to be a pig in Egypt.   No cases of swine fever have been reported there but they’re slaughtering  the pigs anyway – nice!   Never one to miss an opportunity Ryan Air have introduced a £4.00 flight to anywhere in Mexico – return!  To avoid the rush I phoned the helpline immediately but all I got was a load of crackling! 

Quote of the week from BBC News 24.  A health professional came up with this peach of a comment.  “The one certainty is that swine fever is unpredictable.”    So helpful!

Here’s something that stuck me as odd.  An American news team said they’d tracked down a boy in Mexico who they said was the first case of swine fever.  How the hell did they work that out?

Bipolar Bill signing off…

Now you have to ask your selves, do Mexicans actually dance on their hats?   Why?  Because you’re BRITISH you fool!

Sueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, puig-puig-puig.  Cough, spit, spitty spit, spit and sneeeeeeeze.  Oh bum, it seems I’ve contracted pig flu.   Well thank God for that is all I can say, anything to replace the headlines on the news channel.  Yes chums, recession has been knock off the script at last.  Unfortunately we now have at least three weeks of hearing the word, pandemic instead.

It, what ever it is, has now reach Scotland, Spain, America, Canada and Israel.  As it seems to be catching on fast what can we do to slow the spread down?  Well, I can tell you how to speed it up by taking a leaf out of the BBC’s book.  You send a film and lighting crew down to a large airport, Gatwick say, and you ask a reporter to speak to all of the passengers who’ve disembarked from a plane that’s just touch down from Mexico.  You ask them how they’re feeling and pay close attention to the ones who are coughing their lungs up.  Then, and this is the clever bit, then the whole reporting crew heads home and infects their entire family and street, the bloke in the corner shop and Nobby  who owns the chip shop and has never had a day off sick in his life!  

Sound ridiculous?  Naaaa, how many other news teams, around the globe, are doing just that right now?  Me thinks someones got an awful lot of shares in Glaxo Smith-Klein!

And remember.  Nothing works faster Anadin – so take nothing!

That was a rant on behalf of the Bipolar Bill party…